Would anyone be interested in more planet development?

[Talenn]

Many good ideas but one thing I would not want to see is a return to the late game colony management nightmares that was MOO2. Bleh!

I just have nightmares of being late in the game and then finally researching the 'Uber-Gadgetron 900' and then having to go through each and every world and add one to its queue. 10 Turns later, I get the 'Ultra Gadgetron XL' and its the same headache on every colony. Many games I just stopped researching this stuff cuz it was just too much management to keep ahead of it all.

One thing that really appeals in SE4 is the minimal amount of colony management required beyond the initial queuing. Sure, later on there are some new facilities but not every planet needs/wants them. Better models of current facilities are neatly handled by the 'upgrade' command.

So, I guess its all a question of what you are trying to get from the game. Personally, I like the 'big picture' approach already taken with minimal amounts of Colony management and planning/updating of the same. This is not to say that I wouldnt like to see added options, but I would like them to be just that...options...not more things that you are required to do just to 'keep up with the Joneses'.

Talenn

[SunDevil]

Talenn,

You've made a good point, I'll try to make a lot of stuff at base level. In other words the first Version would be available either at the start of the game or within the intial or second round of the research project. This way it would just take the update button to get the new/improved Version if there is one. You can only have so many improvements of housing facilities.

[Jason2]

I would be worried that this game will bog down in tedious micro-management. It already requires a *high* level of management - any more is questionable.... If it is just a matter of new facilities that improve, I would be open to it. If it meant planets would *have* to have these new facilities, I would not... The problem with Civ and Alpha Centauri is they require so much building that that is 90% of the game... I like the fact that this game seems nicely balanced between a building/management sim and warfare/combat.

Just my 2 cents

Jason2

[LintMan]

I'd like to see some more interesting facilities become available (ie: defense, prod boost, etc), but the AI would need to be able take advantage of them for it to be fair.

I also agree with Jason2 about the new facils not being requirements. One of the first things I appreciated about SEIV was that you didn't to deal with the have the whole "population appeasement" factor that CIV, SMAC, and so many other 4X games have, where you need to continually build "holo-theaters", etc just to keep your cities from rioting, because they are always on the edge of doing so - you can never keep them happy enough. Blah. Then in SMAC, they did the same thing with polution control as well as happiness - urk.

[SunDevil]

It wouldn't be hard what so ever to make the ai use whatever add on facilities that are made. No I am not going to make any new facilities requirements. In the game right now there is a total of how many required facilities? 1 = spaceport. And even then if you pick natural merchant as a racial trait you don't have one required facility. Why change a good thing about the game. As posted earlier, the facilities that I might add will either be available at the start of the game and can be improved as the game progresses, or can be researched within the first or second phase of research in that particular project. So lets just focus on the brainstorming of new facilities and ideas. Thanks.

[SunDevil]

Let's just focus on new facilities and new ideas. All ideas and new facilities welcome.
Thanks.

[LintMan]

Another concern I meant to add before was that I'm not sure if adding more facility slots to planets will be unbalancing to the game. I've seen posters here who think there's already too many facility slots on planets. With double the facilities per planet, there's a lot less need for expansion to new planets/systems. (But then, it makes every planet much more valuable and worth dedicating some facility slots to their defense).

An alternate possibility might be to create some new double-duty facilities that would free up some slots for other things. Maybe like a space port that also works as a resupply depot, or a combo value enhancer/climate control facil, or a "space complex" that acts like a space port, resup depot and space yard all in one. Hmm. maybe factor a robotic factory into one of those space port combos, too.

Other new facility ideas:
- "military research centers": provide both research and intel points, analagous to monoliths for resources.
- "global network": gives % bonues to both research and intel, like robotic factories do for resources
- "planetary long-range scanners": works like the ship component, but with longer range.
- "planetary sensors": an assortment of these for planets to match the ship-based gravitic, tachyon, etc ship sensors.
- facils that give a unit or facility or ship production boost, while leaving the other rates untouched.
- I like Tenryu's idea of a facility you could build that would allow you to build more facilities (within limits of course).
- a non-racial facil to increase population.
- non-racial med lab facils to L5
- a security facil that decreases the chance of ALL intel attacks on the planet, and then maybe also a system-Version that decreases chance for the entire system.
- Military command centers - some non-racial facils that improve your combat or defense system-wide.
- planetary shield regenerator - regens planetary shield at, say 300 pts/turn
- planetary cargo facils beyond L3 to allow much more cargo (ie:room for platforms/units) on small planets.
- facils that boost planet values at higher rates than 3%/year
- "ultra-warp-scanner" facil that lets you see all the goings-on in all systems connected by warp points the system the ultra scanner is in.
- total system-wide stellar manipulation blocker - no warp points can be opened or closed into this system, no planet or sun bombs, etc. (To prevent someone from becoming impregnable sealing off their system warps and then building this, a new stellar tech at the top of the stellar tree could be added to trump this facil).

And how about some "galactic wonder" type facils that are extremely expensive, but provide empire-wide benefits (I wouldn't make them "only the first to build it gets the benefit" deal, though (I always thought that was silly) - every race to build one could benefit from it).
- A communications wonder facil that puts you in contact with every race.
- a "galactic news" facility that lets you hear about the major events in the galaxy, for all races you are in contact with. (ie: a major disaster strikes, an empire declares war on another, allies or surrenders, a major battle was lost (no replay though), a ringworld was built, etc.)
- a galctic trading center that doubles(?) your empire's trade income.
- a galactic library to give you a bonus % of research points from EVERY empire.
- empire security net: makes intel attacks against your empire MUCH harder to accomplish